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KARMA AND REINCARNATION
in a coarser garb or functioned in a lower kind of existence. In fact, they have in general ignored the necessity, nay, even the possibility, of the continuing presence of the subsisting reality and have only directed attention to some stations on the road of evolution without caring to know whether there is anyone journeying along the road, and, if so, who he is and how he is going on.
In fact no evolution is possible from the stage of the mineral to that of the vegetable, for there is nothing in the mineral that can evolve. Dr Bose's discoveries of the modern day can have reference only to the Ishwaric life, not the life of any Jiva in the mineral. The whole mineral kingdom has emerged out of the Tamasic aspect of Maya and it forms the material which goes to make the bodies of the Jivas and their means and places of support; mineral matter not composing the body of any Jiva is called 'inanimate' or 'inorganic', not because there is no life at all in it--for it has its very existence in the life of Ishwara—but because there is no separate coordinating life-principle connecting together the several atoms in harmonious co-operation for serving some common end. It is the presence or the absence of such a separate connecting life that makes, in fact, all the difference between the organic and the inorganic sides of Nature The view that is now and then expressed from the modern Theosophical platform: 'every grain of sand has its Jivatma' is clearly
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